White Houses
by Kaellia
Summary: { NaruHina } Love, or something ignites in my veins. And I pray it never fades in white houses. AU. And it's nice not to feel so alone. But I hold onto your secrets in white houses. { Complete }


_Love, or something ignites in my veins. And I pray it never fades in white houses. Based on White Houses by Vanessa Carlton AU. _

. A u t h o r ' s . N o t e .

_Ello! :D Ish moi, Kaellia, again. Lol, I'm writing a lot of fics lately. I'm writing them all at the same time because different ideas just keep coming into mind. Anyhoo, because I'm writing them all at the same time, none of them are complete. xD I should also start on my SasuHinaNeji fic, but I'm too lazy right now. e-e; I'm still not sure what I should write for that one since it's a mere idea. Should I make it angsty? Or should I make it funny and cute? The main synopsis is _'The Hyuuga and the Uchiha are two of the strongest clans in all of Konohagakure. To combine them together would create the ultimate shinobi, being a user of both the Sharingan and the Byakugan. A forced marriage is then planned, and not only the betrothed are against it'_, by the way. Can you guess who else is the angry one? ;D_

_So this is my new fic. It's called _White Houses_, which is the same name as Vanessa Carlton's new single. Yes, you guessed it, it's as songfic. Well, sort of. This fic is based on the song. It's very sweet, and just about the cutest song I have ever heard. x3 You should listen to it. :3 And by the way, in this fic, the gumi is just a regular bunch of teenagers. :D So none of this _shinobi_ business. xD_

_For dedications now, I'm dedicating it to Leah because she loves Vanessa Carlton, and it was because her that I started liking her as well. And of course, she's going to lend me _Harmonium_, VC's new album, so I could burn it and listen to it all over again. My favorite song on that album is _C'est la Vie_. x3 Although, personally, I liked _Be Not Nobody_, her first album, better. Anyway, this is also for Douglas because without flaws, perfection can't exist (inside story), and Aggie, one of my best online friends, because she's one of the very few people who has heard of VC and likes her as much as I do. :D You guys r0x0rz. -snug.- Oh oh, and Tracy-kin because she's just plain awesome at angst, and it was because of her that I felt inspired to write this fic._

D i s c l a i m e r : Unfortunately, I own neither _Naruto_ by Kishimoto Masashi nor _White Houses_ by Vanessa Carlton (the summary of the fic are two lines from the song).  
I n s p i r a t i o n : This fic was inspired by that song and Tracy-kin's fic, _Hardest Thing_. Go read it. It's very sweet and angsty. :3

- **W h i t e H o u s e s** -  
Ge n r e : _Romantic Angst._  
R a t i n g : _PG-13._

- - -

If only I had the slight amount of courage to tell you how I felt about you. If I hadn't been such a coward, maybe I could even have asked you to stay with me. To even move in with me. Then maybe I wouldn't be here today, amongst the group of grieving family and friends, the sea of tears, and the rush of despair. But I didn't. I just let you go without even knowing anything about you except for your name. And you believed that it was because I didn't care. I accidentally let you go without knowing that now, a year later, you would already be gone. _No_. I didn't do it accidentally. I did it on purpose. Because I didn't possess to courage to whisper to you that I loved you. And I still do.

And now, I'm here in this vast, white church. The windows are draped in black curtains that hide the view of the outer world that is slowly beginning to drown in rain. The sky is crying. The Heavens, too, are mourning for you. There is a person talking up at the front. He is giving a speech, telling us about your childhood years. His voice echoes loudly through the hollow building, and for the first time, I know something about you. You came from a wealthy family. When you were young, you could never live up to the standards of which your parents set out for you. You were lonely. You were tortured. But last summer, I didn't need to know all these things about you to really _know_ you. Wasn't that enough for me to know that I had fallen in love? To finally be able to connect so deeply with somebody.

You are here as well. You are up at the front...sleeping. I am too overwhelmed in guilt to go up to you and speak to you, so I stay here behind all the benches, at the very back, just in front of the doors. I don't need to see you to know that your eyes are closed, and I don't need to speak to you to know that you won't speak back. There are not a lot of people here, but the ones who are have silent tears cascading down their faces. The girls' cheeks are stained with mascara streaks, and their eyes are all red and puffy. I wonder to myself why my eyes do not look the same.

When all the speakers have spoken, everybody sits down and enters their own world of silence. I look around. There are nine people, including me. I sit down on a separate bench and follow their lead. Only I am not contemplating deeply or praying. Instead, I am remembering the time in the little bungalow by the beach. It was the night, and we were lying on the floor while you played the keyboard for us. Some of the keys were sticky and couldn't press down properly, and the notes were out of tune. The sound it made was not so nice, but your music made it beautiful. You kept smiling at me as you played, commenting on how this keyboard has become rusty from disuse. I smiled back. I could have gone on like that forever, watching your slender fingers move gracefully across the keys. It was the best night of my life. I wanted it to last for all eternity.

And then you started singing. Your voice carried through the room. It wasn't perfect, but it was beautiful to me. I felt the feelings that you put into your song, and you even turned the ugliness of the keyboard into magnificence. You shone. You radiated. I could feel its innocence. Everybody was mesmerized by your brilliance, by your wonder, and by your harmonic melodies. That was when I first fell in love. As I sit here now, remembering that night, the knot in my stomach is slowly loosening, and I hear the faint, distant sounds of the keyboard and your voice playing breathtakingly in my mind. Why did you have to go? I want to listen to it again. I have lived with this ghost for too long. I need it in flesh, bone, and blood. If only I could just rewind time back to the past... I would give anything to be able to do that and see you again, laughing and smiling and singing.

When she felt inspired and started dancing, everybody's attention was directed to her instead. You were then left alone and neglected. Her movements were agile. They were elegant, refined, and poised. Her sleek, long golden hair moved around with her, twirling at all the right places, as if she could control it. But even so, I secretly watched you as you looked at your own short, black hair in disgust. We were all in envy of her for being so flawless, but in all her perfection, she still wasn't beautiful to me like you were. She was simply a lifeless doll, with watertight features. She wasn't real. But then there was you. You were genuine. You were flawed, and you were mottled, and you were vintage.

And then there was that time when I offered you a ride in my red convertible. You blushed deeply as you heard the invitation, but I took your hand, and you stepped timidly inside. We cruised around the neighborhood, and it was just the two of us. The streets were empty, and we were free, the wind rushing past us, gently sweeping against our faces. All was fine, and all was perfect. I don't know how many times we drove around in the same circle over and over again, but you did not complain. Instead, you laughed. Our sunglasses were over our eyes as if erasing everything else but each other. And together, we drove off into the sunset. You loved that red convertible. But it's not red anymore. I look at it from outside the window. The top is pulled over, and it is now black.

Your laughter is the second sunrise I awaken to each day, and continuously, I can hear your voice, calling out my name. Every moment of every day, I see you. You are always on the streets, waving to me and beckoning for me to run to you, but when I do, I merely hold hands with the air. It isn't nearly as nice as you; it just slips through my hand, and I am alone once again. During lunch, I see you on the other side of the road, smiling at me with a bowl of ramen in your hands. I ate so much of it during the last summer, you know it's my favorite. I step off campus to meet you there, but the taste of the ramen is bland in my mouth. The material is intangible, and it is nothing but an illusion. And I am called into the school, being questioned as to why I was off the property. But I can't tell them about you. I just can't.

I fall back into the present, and I realize that the ceremony has ended. Everybody is leaving the church now, and I follow them out. The rain has not stopped, continuing to pour and emphasizing our losses. It is doing enough crying for the both of us, and as I slip into my cracked leather seat, I drive through it, wondering why we all have to be so miserable. Why we cry and why we feel sadness. Won't the world be so much better if we don't feel despair at all? But without despair...what would happiness feel like? We won't know. Because there won't be something different from it. Happiness will then be our sadness, and the tears will start all over again. But it doesn't happen for me. I do not cry. For me, it won't matter for me if they even take my happiness away because without you, it doesn't make much of a difference to me.

I arrive shortly at your house and pull my car into the driveway. Inside, your parents are sitting at the table, talking about what they will do to your room. Your father says he wants to rent it out make some extra money, but your mother gets angry at him and accuses him of not caring. She wants it to stay. She wants to keep it and pretend as if you still live there, and you are still apart of the family. When I come inside, your mother rushes to me and beckons me to stay for dinner. Even though I accept, I hardly touch the food that is set down on my plate. The meal is silent, and nobody makes a sound. There are five plates of food. One for your mother, one for your father, one for your little sister, one for me...and one for you. When we finish, your mother dumps your food down the garbage and washes your plate with the rest of ours.

Can't you see that she loves you? Can't you see that they all love you? Why did you leave and force this depression upon them? Their spirits are crushed, and the family I see here is completely different from the one that I can see in the picture frame on the wall. That family was laughing. That family was _happy_. But then again, you were in that family. You were the sunshine of their lives. You brought happiness to them, and you brought happiness to me. But at the same time, you took it all away.

Suddenly, there is a loud crash. We look over to your mom, and we see that her hands are shaking. Shaking so much that as soon as she picks up a dish, her hands cannot hold onto them and instantly drops them to the floor, shattering into little pieces. Sharp, ivory wedges litter the floor, and nobody bothers to clean it. Nobody makes a sound as once again, the tears hit their faces. And once again, they are drowning. Drowning...drowning...into the deep, bottomless waters that you have created for them. The waves of the sea reach up and engulf their sunshine, and they are left with nothing but a deep, dark hollow. They try to swim, the current of the waves are too great for them, and they are swept away. Can't you feel their misery? If you are here right now, will it eat you up inside to see this? If you can wind back time, will you still make the same choices?

Your little sister, Hanabi, then leads me upstairs to your room. As I enter, I catch the faintest scent of strawberries, and I see various pictures of us hung up on the walls and resting on the tables. The walls are painted a light shade of lavender, the color that I said I thought was perfect for you. Everything in this room screams your name, and upon hearing it, I just want to throw myself onto the bed and embrace the pillows, sniffing in your scent and never forgetting you. I want to wrap myself into the curtains, stroking the lace and feeling as if I am with you again. I feel like lying, spread apart on the soft carpet, imagining that you are lying right there beside me. I want to scream your name. Scream your name and call out to you until you come. There are so many things that I want to do, and I am able to do them in my own dream world. But your sister flies me back to reality when she goes over to your desk and hands me a book.

"This was her journal," she says. "The very last entry was an imaginary letter that she wrote to you. I think that she would have wanted you to read it."

The book is then placed into my hands, and I begin reading. As I flip through the pages, I read about your experiences. Through childhood to adolescence, I can visualize your actions, your voice, your laughter...all these apparitions continue until I come to page with a poem on it, and a particular stanza catches my eye:

_It's alright and it's nice not to be so alone_  
_But I hold on to your secrets in white houses_

The same words that you sang to us that night. As I read this poem, your melody comes back, and I am able to hear your voice again. Being a mere memory, it sounds hollow and insecure. But it was a reminiscence of you, and just the mere sentiment is enough to me for now. As I continue to read, I feel as if you are there right behind me, reading it out loud over my shoulder. Your voice whispers gently into my ear, and I am pacified by your expressions. The handwriting was written in small, curved letters with black ink. It's slightly messy and shaky, as if you were on on a vehicle as your hand flew across the pages. On the same page is a letter addressed to me. The same one that your sister mentioned.

_The summer was always a time of loneliness for me. Those two long, hot months usually meant being sheltered at home, air conditioning, growing pale, and nevering changing out of my pajamas. I never stepped into the outside world, where I would experience the heavy beat of the radiant, summer sun, or the wistful, white clouds with no destination that drifted wherever the wind took them. I longed to be apart of that world. But I was never meant to be for it all left me behind. And I was alone again._

_Until you came, that is._

_It was an accident. A pure accident that I ended up with you on the small, secluded beach. But oh, what a wonderful accident it had been. I pray and thank over and over again for her car breaking down and leaving us stranded right beside the ocean's waves and the soft sand. I pray and thank over and over again for her driving off and leaving me with these four, unknown people. You were strange and foreign to me. Never have I met such people before. And as I walked through the door, I soon came to be one of you, always staying up late past midnight, and spinning empty bottles. Never would I have dared to do these things if I was ever back home. And we promised each other it's 'til the end._

_It was just the five of us. Just two boys and three girls all alone, living together in a petite bungalow. We played, we danced, and we lived._

_But nobody could quite compare with you. You didn't know it, but I was always watching you. Even while we did our own separate activities, I kept on watching you, admiring the dreamy way your eyes looked when you gazed at something far off into the distance. I wanted to meet those eyes. To step in front of them and stare right back, deep into your soul and know them. I wanted to hold your face in my hands and caress the sides. I wanted to...but I didn't. I couldn't. I couldn't tell you how I felt because that was just the kind of person that I was. I hurt with silence. I hurt with neglect. I hurt with nothing._

_But then you held me in your arms, and it felt everything else in the world vanished. I felt like a different person, and I felt like I could talk to you. The tighter your embrace went around my shoulders, the more I felt that it would be forever. I wanted it to be forever. I never wanted it to end. Please don't make this feeling disappear._

Love, or something ignites in my veins  
And I pray it never fades in white houses

_As the layers begin to slip off, we came together. We laid there, underneath the sheets, moving, laughing, and _loving_. You stared at me with the warmest, cobalt eyes, gazing into my own with deep thoughts and unspoken fears. Your face was so endearing that I couldn't resist running my hands through your soft, sun-kissed hair and allowing my fingers to trace the lovable scars on the sides of your face. And when our bodies connected, we became one being. Our souls combined and even though I had never known you, I felt like I knew everything about you. Your life, your fears, and your desires. It was enough to make me forget the rush of the blood and the little bit of pain that came with the first time._

_After that day, everything changed. Everybody was distant. Everybody was gone. We never spun the bottles again. She never danced again, and I never played again. Why did I care so much? That day was the day that I had to go back home. As we all waved goodbye and I boarded the bus, I wondered why you didn't come after me. Maybe ask for my phone number or any other means of contact. But at that time, I wasn't worried. All I could think about was how I couldn't wait for the next summer, when I would see you, and the five would have our fun all over again. It didn't matter if we wouldn't talk for the rest of the year because I knew that when I come back the next year, you will all still be waiting for me. Because in my heart, there was only the five of us._

_The year went by swiftly, and the next summer quickly came. It is the first day, and already, I am making my way towards the beach. Riding the bus, we drive past the town, the sceneries passing by like little memories that happened so long ago. It felt like forever since I last saw you. Since I last heard you. Since I last _touched_ you._

_Looking inside my bag, I see a picture. It's the photo that she took as a joke when you and I crashed into each other and fell on the floor. Even though the summer was over then, the feeling in my heart did not fade along with it. It stayed in there, sitting quietly, and pounding in sync with every beat that my heart made, waiting to unleash again. I look at the picture and wonder what you can be thinking about right now. Maybe you will remember me when I arrive at that little bungalow where I had the best times of my life. And maybe you will remember that special night that we shared together. Maybe you will save the memory, and we'll reminisce together the next time we see each other. And maybe I'll even learn to laugh again._

And you, maybe you'll remember me  
What I gave is yours to keep  
In white houses.

_But as soon I get off of the bus, I see that the bungalow has been torn down. My laughter dies again, as I realize that we will never meet again._

_Love,_  
_Hinata_.

As I read this, my eyes become blurry. There is something wet on my face, and it takes me a while to realize that they are tears. _Tears_. The tears that have never touched me before for as long as I can remember. They slide down my cheeks and drip from my chin, landing on the page and smearing your curvy, black writing. They continue to trickle. They won't stop. And as the minutes tick by, the song you sang continues to play in my mind, until it reaches the end and fades slowly into silence. Everything is quiet. And I continue to stand there, knowing that I'll never see it. I'll never be able to hold you in my arms again. And I will never, ever be able to hear your beautiful voice and your wonderful melodies. Maybe it was all just a mistake. Maybe it was never even meant to be.

And slowly, as I lose hope, your magic disappears, and the white houses fade into black. You are gone.

. A u t h o r ' s . C o r n e r .

_Well, that's it. That's the finish. The end of this sad, little angsty fic. Well...I think it was sad. ;-; Still didn't make me cry. e-e; -sigh.- I'm just like Naruto. I can't cry. WAH. xD Anyway, what did everybody think of that? :DD -your cue to click the purple 'Go' button and review!- Well, now that I reread it, this fic really has no purpose. xD I tried descriptions...but I failed because I just plain suck at it. Tracy-kin is much better at it. Go read her _Hardest Thing_ fic. It's so sad and depressing. Really perfect for the Christmas holiday. And it will make _you_ cry _your_ eyes out._

_Hey, you know what I've decided? In all the one-shots that I do, I will include a little sneak peek at one of my other fics that I'm currently writing. In this case, it's going to be _Blood Reprisal_, a AU vampire fic that I'm writing. The summary is _'When Naruto awakes to his parents' dead bodies, the only clue he could find was a symbol: The Uchiha Fan. Now he has dedicated his life as a vampire hunter, and he will never rest until the Uchiha family of vampires is completely annihilated.'_ Likee the summary? :DD Well, it's rated R - NC-17, and it's going to be _yaoi_. It contains male sex (-winkwinknudgenudge.-), rape, and some minor incest. o-o; But don't worry, it's between Hinata and Neji, not Sasuke and Itachi. -shudder.- Uchiha-cest still kind of bothers me right now. Hopefully, I'll grow out of it soon. Anyway, peeketh!_

The night was silent. No wind blew, and no crickets chirped. The only sound that could be heard were the sound of his footsteps as he crept cautiously through the dark, ominous alleyway. The moon was hidden behind the tall buildings, and there was no emitted light to guide him down the way. He decided to crouch down to get closer to the ground and instantly caught sight of a trail of an unknown fluid that seemed black in the darkness. It was blood. He could smell the vile stench of it as he dipped his fingers into the puddle and brought it up to his lips. He brought his tongue out from between the lips, the very tip just slightly touching the fingertips of his glove. Yes...it was blood. And where blood separated from its possessor abided surely meant that his target was nearby. Vigilantly, he continued forward, his gun clutched tightly at his side.

Suddenly, behind him, he heard a woman moaning. He turned around to ascertain the sound and saw indistinctly two black figures pressed tightly against each other from across the other side of the street just under a particularly weak-lighted lamppost. One figure was surely the woman, who sighed heavily and whimpered in either pleasure or pain. The other one stood behind her, one hand clutched firmly around her head and the other around her waist, with his face buried deeply into her neck. If he hadn't known any better, he would have guessed that these were just two nightly lovers, exercising their affair where nobody could see them; however, his sources told him otherwise. _Jackpot_, his thought within his mind as his lips twisted into a smirk. He made sure that his weapon was in full supply of bullets as he cocked his gun and brought it out from its holster. He closed one eye and avidly took aim at the figure behind the woman. His finger was just about to pull against the trigger when the woman opened her eyes and saw him. She gave a small scream, and the next thing he knew, the other figure was gone, and the woman's body slumped over on the sidewalk.

"Well, I wonder what kind of person you are, spying on two lovers in the middle of the night. Heh, horny bastard. What's the matter, can't get any yourself?" whispered a smug voice just behind him. He simpered but did not reply. Without having to look back, he grabbed the other's arm, twisted it behind him, and in an instant, he had him steadily crushed against the wall of the alleyway, his foot planted on the man's back. "This strength... You're not a normal human, are you?" the man questioned. The free hand that the man had that was not twisted behind his back was gripping a knife, an act he failed to acknowledge. Before the knife had a chance to lacerate, however, his grip upon the man's arm loosened as he jumped back to avoid the blade.

"No. And neither are you, _vampire_."

_That was the first four paragraphs to the first chapter. Well, I'm not really good with descriptions, but hopefully, that was okay. I'm going to write a bit into the story and then start releasing it. So what'd everybody think of that? Come on, click that purple button, go! :D_


End file.
